The Croatian highways tender for the selection of a contractor for the new tolling system and the purchase of spare equipment for the new tolling system has ended. On Friday, the final verdict of the Higher Administrative Court was announced, which rejected the Austrian company's appeal, and now it is clear that the new highway tolling system in the Republic of Croatia will be built by a consortium of Slovakian "Sky Tool" and Czech "TulNet", writes Jutarnji, Danica.hr reports.

The consortium committed to build the new system within two years for 80 million euros excluding VAT. This is 20 percent less than the estimated procurement value of the tender, which was 100 million euros without VAT. The project is fully funded by the European Union through the National Plan for Recovery and Resilience. In other words, this means that the contract should be signed in the fall and the contractor should be familiar with the work by the end of the year.

This means that toll booths on highways will be a thing of the past by the end of 2026 at the latest. Users will be able to pay for highways in two ways – one is an ENK device that will be topped up in advance, and the other way is to link their license plates to a bank account from which tolls will be collected automatically.

HAC says that the new toll collection system is a combination of two proven technologies; billing through a more modern version of the device installed in the vehicle (ENC) and billing through an automatic license plate reading system. More than 85 percent of all tourists in the Republic of Croatia come by road, so the offered solution is adapted for users who do not need to buy an ENK device, but will use payment by reading license plates.